What happens when you go through a mid life crisis and instead of a porsche, you get a bike.

Just 99 miles to go

Saturday, April 09, 2005

Surgery Part2

So I wake and the first thing I notice is that I'm shivering. Not a little but whole body shakes. The nurses start piling blankets on me that have been in the "blanket toaster". That warms me up quickly and now I'm hot but still shivering. I had heard about this effect of anesteshia but had never experienced it. The put some drug into the IV which gets rid of the shivers in a few minutes.

While I'm going through the shivers the doc comes over and trys to tell me how the operation went. I don't know why they do this. I just woke up, and I'm shaking like I'm having convulsions. Does he really expect me to retain anything he says. The only thing I do remember is something about complications because of my "manly" hamstring. Something about them being thick and strong. The wife told me later he had a problem threading them through the bone but it ended up alright. It just made the procedure longer than planned on.

The doc leaves , the shivers are under control , now the next side effect I had heard about. Nausea. I did MTB'rs proud though. I never lost it. Another drug in the IV and some oxygen and that was under control. The nurse brings me some 7up or sprite, and I gulp it down casue I'm dying of thirst. Big mistake. Back comes the nausea. I just sit there for a little while and it finally goes away. I look around and see I'm the only one left in this surgical center. Everyone else has gone home. So I start mentally trying to come out of the "fog" I'm in and get the last bit of nausea under control. I really didn't feel like moving, and start worrying about what happens if I cant clear my head and lose the dizzyness (which wasnt helping the nausea). I know I shouldn't have cared but this nurse looked like she was the last one there and was ready to go home as soon as she got rid of me. I was probly wrong. I wasn't thinking straight at all.

20 minutes later things start to clear and I feel like I can finally get up. The nurse leaves me and my wife to get me dressed. I wore the baggiest shorts I owned so there was no problem getting them over this huge imobilizer they had the leg strapped in. The nurse then brings me a pair of crutches and shows me how to use them after adjusting them for my gorilla like arms. They were easier to use than I thought. I get last minute instructions and paper work and I can go. They offer to take me out in a wheel chair or let me go out on the crutches. Already I can tell that getting up and down from a sitting position is a major pain in the butt, so I crutch myself out to our Explorer.

The leg is in an immobilizer which keeps it in a straight locked position. I know I'm not getting into the front of our suv. One downfall of being 6'3". I've yet to find a vehicle that I can sit in and completely stretch my legs out it. I pull myself into the back seat (thank goodness they're bench style and not bucket) and stretch myself out across the width of the vehicle. The wife just can close the door and I'm on my way home.